Sunday, September 10, 2017

Map My Escape

Watching all the devastation in Mexico, Texas and now Florida, I began rethinking the escape plan I’d come up with, back in July of last year, when the area was ablaze with fires.
I’d decided that, should there be an evacuation situation – and there had been one two years before I moved in when a fire on little mountain resulted in evacuation of this senior complex and the multi-family complex next door, that I’d load the car only with that which was important and that which personally mattered most to me:
1.        Cell phone and charger
2.       Fanny pack, with driver’s license, credit cards
3.       Important papers, such as social security/medicare card, title to car
4.       Creative Memory photo albums
5.       Laptop
That list is still valid, except I wouldn’t worry too much about the laptop because the Sony Vaio I had at the time died, has been replaced with a HP Envy, and I’m not as attached to the HP as I was to the Vaio, and would welcome the HPs demise, so I could try again with a different brand.
Not that there’s anything technically wrong with it. I just don’t care much for it.
At any rate, just in case I wouldn’t have time to save my fourteen Creative Memory Albums, seeing all the water damage from the floods and hurricanes, I began looking online into waterproof/fireproof safes that I could use as furniture and keep the albums safe from whatever comes our way.
Even if it’s an earthquake, I felt the albums would be safe and secure in a safe under piles of rubble.
Not seeing anything online that could be used multi-functionally as furniture, and anything that wasn’t either too small or too large, I began thinking --- What’s the quickest way to get those heavy albums down to the car and have decided one of those grocery carts I see the seniors using would work.
I could set it at the bottom of the stairs, run up/down the stairs loading the albums, then push the cart to the car and unload.
Next part of the plan, and not addressed last time, was where to go.
If there weren't so many creeps and criminals in the world, just looking for victims, I could live in the car. That not being a safe bet, a hotel in Long Beach would be okay, but Long Beach is too close to water and, if California is destined to fall into the sea, as some alarmist have prophesized, that’s not where I want to be.
I’m thinking further inland -- a hotel in Palm Springs or Nevada until I get the all clear. But I don't know. More planning to be done.
Made contact with the Writer of Christian Literature this morning – the resident who recently relocated back to Florida.
She’s safe and in an area that’s only getting “heavy rain”.
When I mentioned she’d picked the worst possible time to move back to Florida, she said, “I miscalculated. I thought the hurricane season had passed”.
WHAT!?
She left all this sunshine to move back to an area she knew had a hurricane season?
I can’t imagine. I’d rather take my chances with fires and earthquakes.
Oh, and by the way, today is Day 14 of no A/C.

2 comments:

  1. No A/C makes me cranky. I can't fathom what they are going through in hot and humid Florida. But this has made us make our list too. Funny, pretty much the same things. I used to think snow was the enemy. I'm starting to rethink that. I don't want mudslides, earthquakes, hurricanes or gators, sink holes so I am stuck in the mid atlantic region I guess. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms. Any time I lament these disasters, someone will pipe up and say, "but you live in california with all those earthquakes." Uh, not where I live, in the middle of California. We have a few temblors, but nothing major, and certainly nothing to to escape from.

    That said, I too have a bit of an escape plan. We have an envelope with all the valuable documents in it that we know to grab should we have to leave quickly. I would also want my phone and laptop. Some clothing if I had time to grab some.

    ReplyDelete